Machalta Shabab Review

Multiple Personality Disorders. That was what this film suffered from. And for
those who watched it till the end (no one did except me), well, they suffered
from much more.

This film is publicized as a semi-porn flick (which it isn't), has the plot of a suspense thriller (which it isn't) and tries hard to send out a message against drugs (which it actually doesn't). The story is about Commander Mehra, who is released on parole in a murder case and is looking back at his past, realizing how he was damned by so called friends and enemies and implicated in a murder case, while his son was brutally murdered. Unable to help him is his friend Ramnath, a high-ranking police official whose very own son is now involved in a drug smuggling racket - to help the Commander would mean exposing his own son.

Anyway, the story takes an even more gruesome turn when the Commander's daughter is raped and his wife is murdered. Meanwhile, Ramnath, unable to contain his sense of responsibility, kills his own son in a drug bust. He comes to the Commander and tells him not to worry, that he'll look after the formers daughter as his own. About this much of the story takes two hours, with of course, a couple of songs where Disco Shanti does dances (for who and why God alone knows) which have no relevance to film whatsoever.

But the final scene of the movie takes the cake. The villain of the piece, Banke, the guy who masterminded the whole plot, is sitting at home and watching Shahenshah (the Amitabh one). Suddenly the TV goes off, and in walks the Commander, all dressed in the Shahenshah costume (right hand chains and all). Poor Amitabh. More importantly, poor me.

That is the agony of being a film critic with ethical standards. When you are stuck in rut like this, you have to watch the rest of the crowd desert you like rats do a sinking ship, and still hold on. And you understand so many of the simple blessings of life in a way that you never did before - like that of not being employed in the projector rooms of theaters like this.

I suppose the message about the film has gotten across. Incidentally, there was
one beneficiary of the whole thing - the guy who ran the canteen. Almost everyone
thronged the place to stuff themselves in the interval and drive the depression
away. Yes, people actually do that. Most left then, but yours loyally spent the
other half pulling out the hair of his eyebrows just to stay awake and asking
himself stupid math tables just to see if his faculties of reasoning were intact.

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